Why We're Still Not Buying These 5 Bullshit Arguments Against Amanda Knox

There's a new documentary about the Amanda Knox case, if you're into that sort of thing (that sort of thing being "the tragic yet gruesome murder of a young women somehow repackaged as a sexy slasher tale with an international twist"). The team behind the Netflix doc, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and drops on the streaming service on September 30, has, perhaps to fuel debate over whether it will come down on the innocent or guilty side, released two trailers, one that asks the viewer to "believe her," one to "suspect her." Spoiler: the "believe her" trailer is much better.

Amanda was, perhaps, too emotional and impulsive for her own good. In the days after Meredith Kercher's murder, she was impulsive and chatty and affectionate; she didn't think anything through. Her crying jags in court gained her sympathy, but also drew even more attention to her case. Someone so young and, well, scattered, doesn't make for a convincing mastermind, but she makes a helluva victim. Not of the crime, of course, but of the Italian legal system. It's time to face the fact that the case against Knox was flimsy at best and at worst a sadistic attempt to capitalize on what's essentially bad timing for international fame. In either case, it was definitely a clusterfuck. Let's review...

Knox's "suspicious behavior" amounted to, basically, acting oddly after her arrest. Friends later confirmed that she had been a slightly odd young woman her whole life (she liked to sing, big whoop). Which you might think would mean that, for her, she was being normal—albeit grief-stricken—after the murder. But to the prosecutor, a young woman who wasn't 100% perfect was basically a crazy person, and crazy people are murderers. At no point did she ever act "guilty," though. She didn't flee, and she let herself be interrogated again and again before contacting a lawyer. Because that's what killers do, right? Stick around the crime scene and make themselves known to the investigators?

Don't forget, she liked to write short stories about rape. It's not out of bounds to look at a suspect's private or semi-private musings about rape when there is evidence that one took place. But rape is common across countries and across campuses, and it's in the media pretty much constantly. Women are sexually assaulted with appalling frequency (and Meredith Kercher was a victim of that kind of violence). Women have to think about the possibility of assault all the time. Which could explain why Knox wrote those stories in the first place: rape is something most women think about pretty often. It doesn't make them more likely to be violent—it might even keep them safe. And if Knox needed to process her feelings about rape through artistic expression, that is, again, not uncommon. The only thing that's unusual here is how one woman's actual bodily harm was somehow twisted into a reason to call another woman unstable. To shame her for thinking about, having, and writing about sexual acts. To look at a bloody crime scene and a body that had been violated and, without consulting the evidence at all, turn around and blame the closest woman is not only shoddy investigative work; it amounts to a misogynist conspiracy.

That wasn't even the prosecutor's best idea. Nah, his best idea was when he suggested that the killing was actually for an ancient Satanic cult that murdered people and stole their organs to use in sacrifices. That all of Kercher's organs remained in her body didn't matter. It also didn't matter that Knox, who was from Seattle and had only been in Italy for a short time, spoke only passable Italian and thus would have had a pretty hard time joining an ancient Italian Satanic murder cult. That argument was, thankfully, thrown out,...just like it had been when the prosecutor had tried it in another case years earlier.

(If you were wondering if there are still people who think Amanda is a vampiric serial murderer whose misdeeds have been covered up by the Illuminati, the answer is OH YEAH BABY).

Now, let's not idly dismiss the fact that the cops did, actually, do their job. They found and convicted the killer. His name was Rudy Guede and his bloody shoe prints and finger prints were found at the crime scene. But the Italian judicial system is, well, fucked up (as is the American; rotten apple to rotten orange), so they basically said, Mama mia! Let's keep ruining this girl's life! (I am Italian and I'm not going to apologize for this joke, capisce?)

And yeah, yeah, yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah, I hear you in the back, Guy with a Megaphone, screaming, "She signed a confession!"She signed a confession. Since no one in the history of man has ever recanted a signed confession, I guess we should just call her what she is: a stupid baby murder girl.

And not just that, but a slut! A big old slut on whom the cops could "smell sex." She had boys over to her apartment, she shopped for underwear, she kissed in public. She wore a dress. At age 20, in an unfamiliar country, her roommate freshly murdered in their apartment, she took comfort in the embrace of her boyfriend while at a police station. (The nerve!) Knox's sexuality—both the verifiable encounters she had in Italy and the femme fatale identity projected onto her—were consistently used to discredit her in a way that never would or could happen to a man. She was pretty ("Foxy Knoxy"), and a little promiscuous, and this, combined with some very bad luck, almost landed her in jail for 26 years.

BONUS ARGUMENT: A motive you say? She did it because she was fighting with Meredith and/or she wanted attention. Girls in cat fights, girls who want attention. Gotta love stereotypes, right?

The truth is this: In 2007, an innocent life was taken. And another was almost ruined in a modern-day witch trial.

Meredith Kercher's identity, her very personhood, was largely ignored by the media. Instead, she was a prop, a body, a piece of evidence. Her name was a buzzword meant to provoke sympathy or outrage. It happened before with Nicole Brown Simpson; it happened again with Hae Min Lee. The only good woman, in the eyes of many, is the dead woman, so that's what they focus on, that's what they lionize. She was young. She was a woman. She died. And if you live, if you show signs of being a breathing, flawed, passionate, attractive, naive, fully-formed person, as Knox did, well, that's too much. You're obviously a depraved killer.